Workshop on Meshfree Methods
at the University of Iowa
November 4 (Saturday), 2000

Organizers: J.S. Chen, K.K. Choi, W. Han, S. Oliveira and D. Stewart

Recently, a next generation of numerical methods, collectively called meshfree methods or meshless methods, have attracted more and more researchers in computational sciences and engineering. The goal of the research on the meshfree methods is to modify the internal structure of the traditional finite element method to make it more flexible, versatile and robust. Meshfree methods have been successfully applied in several areas where the application of the traditional finite element method is limited: moving discontinuities such as cracks and shocks, multi-scale resolution, large material distortions, etc. A large variety of meshfree methods have been developed in the past few years, including Element-Free Galerkin Method, hp-Clouds, Partition of Unity Finite Element Method, Reproducing Kernel Particle Method.

A workshop on meshfree methods will be held at the University of Iowa on Saturday, November 4, 2000. The aim of this workshop is to bring together mathematicians, computer scientists and engineering researchers to exchange ideas, results and applications of the meshfree methods. The workshop will provide a good opportunity especially for numerical analysts as many fundamental issues related to the meshfree methods still need to be investigated. The workshop is organized by J.S. Chen, K.K. Choi, W. Han, S. Oliveira and D. Stewart.

Professor Ivo Babuska will give a keynote presentation. In addition, there will be some invited presentations. If you like to present your work on meshfree methods, or if you are interested in knowing more about the methods, you are cordially invited to participate the workshop.

The workshop is sponsored by IMA and NSF/DARPA. There is no registration fee for attending the workshop. Mathematicians from IMA Participating Institutions are eligible to receive IMA/PI funds for the workshop expenses, where available and if approved by the mathematician's own department chair. A limited amount is also reserved to partially support some other participants of the workshop.

If you are interested in giving a talk, or if you need some support for your expense, you are encouraged to contact Weimin Han (whan@math.uiowa.edu) as early as possible, preferably before the end of March.

IMA Participating Institutions Programs